Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [93]
And, picking his dominoes up again, he added:
‘Right, let’s carry on. Where were we? I believe Grivet was about to put down the double six.’
Grivet did put down the double six. The game went on, stupid and monotonous.
The paralysed woman looked at her hand, sunk in the most frightful despair. Her hand had just betrayed her. It felt to her as heavy as lead now; never again would she be able to lift it. Heaven did not want Camille to be avenged, but had taken away from his mother the one means she had to let men know that he was the victim of a murder. The unhappy woman told herself that she was no good any longer for anything except to join her child in the ground. She lowered her eyes, feeling useless from now on and trying to believe that she was already in the darkness of the tomb.
XXIX
A new phase began. Thérèse, driven to extremes by fear and not knowing where to look for consolation, started to mourn the drowned man openly in front of Laurent.
She suffered a sudden collapse. Her overstretched nerves snapped and her dry, violent nature softened. Already, in the first days of her marriage, she had experienced emotional outbursts, and these returned, like a necessary and inevitable reaction. After she had struggled with all her nervous energy against Camille’s ghost and when she had lived for several months in a state of vague irritation, rebelling against her sufferings and trying to heal them by sheer effort of will, she suddenly felt such weariness that she was overcome and gave in. So, a woman once more, even a little girl, no longer feeling she had the strength to stiffen herself, stand up and furiously drive off her terrors, she relapsed into pity, tears and regrets, hoping that these would bring her some relief. She tried to take advantage of the weaknesses of the flesh and the spirit that took hold of her: perhaps the drowned man, who had not given way to her annoyance, would give in to her tears. She felt a self-interested remorse, telling herself that this was probably the best way to pacify and please Camille. Like certain pious women who think they can deceive God and gain a pardon by praying with their lips and adopting meek attitudes of penance, Thérèse humbled herself, smote her breast and spoke words of repentance, without having anything more in the depths of her heart but fear and cowardice. Apart from that, she felt a sort of physical pleasure in abandoning herself, feeling soft and broken and offering herself to pain without trying to resist.
She crushed Mme Raquin with the weight of her tearful despair. She subjected the paralysed woman to daily use, making her a kind of prayer-stool, a piece of furniture before which she could confess her sins without fear and ask for pardon. As soon as she felt the need to weep, or to relieve herself with sobs, she knelt before the cripple and there cried out, panting for breath, playing a scene of remorse all by herself and finding relief in weakness and exhaustion.
‘I am a wretch,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t deserve forgiveness. I deceived you, I pushed your son to his death. You will never forgive me ... Yet perhaps if you could see the remorse that is wrenching me apart, if you could know how much I am suffering, then perhaps you would take pity on me ... No, there is no pity for me. I would like to die here at your feet, crushed with shame and sorrow.’
She would talk in this way for hours on end, swinging from despair to hope, blaming herself, then forgiving herself. She would take on the voice of a sick little girl, now snapping, now pleading. She would lie down on the floor, then get up again, acting according to whatever idea of humility or pride, repentance or revolt came into her head. She would even at times forget that she was kneeling in front of Mme Raquin, and continue her monologue in a dreamlike state. When she had thoroughly numbed herself with her own words, she would stagger to her feet and go back downstairs to the shop, dazed but calm, no longer afraid of